What Happened? The Tangled Web Of Sony And Spider-Man

2014 was a complicated year for that Amazing Spider-Man Peter Parker, a character split between two companies for his public representation. Selling the film rights to Spider-Man in the late 70s and wheeling-and-dealing for a motion picture adaptation in the 1980s lead to Marvel Comics losing control of the Spider-Man film rights as the property suddenly became viable with advancements in filmmaking technology. Marvel Comics held on strong to the IP protection rights, which allowed them to franchise Spider-Man product outside of the films. With Sony having acquired the film rights in 1999, the first decade of the new millennium was mutually beneficial for both them and Marvel with director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire building a trilogy of films that only managed to get bigger at the worldwide box office (Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3 made $821, $783 and $890 in millions respectively).

Sam Raimi was pulled away from the series and Marvel Studios, founded under Spider-Man executive producer Avi Arad, was bought out by Disney with its parent company and given the freedom to make its own films under president Kevin Feige. With the success of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel announced their plans to have a crossover Avengers movie in 2012. Sony’s Spider-Man reboot team refused to be outdone so they slotted The Amazing Spider-Man with Marc Webb directing and Andrew Garfield in the lead in 2012. Neither film was a flop, but history will remember The Avengers for the game-changing blockbuster it was and will only remember The Amazing Spider-Man as doing well enough to precipitate Amazing Spider-Man 2.

By the time production started on Sony’s fifth Spider-Man film, the mega franchise had risen and studios suddenly looked at their non-Batman film franchises in a new way. Now it looked like any character in the licensing you bought could be monetized into a series or movie of his or her own. While Warner Bros had made a deal to absorb DC Comics and their popular multiverse of characters, Sony and Fox were left with Marvel characters they had made popular in the age when sequels, not spin-offs, were the desire of the audience. Much like how Sony’s first Spider-Man trilogy proved there was money in brightly colored Marvel Comics heroes, Marvel had now proved to Sony that a continuity-heavy structure for a film series could go beyond bringing back the same audience but could also foster interest in new crossover properties. Sony planned to use Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a jumping off point for their Spider-Verse, giving Andrew Garfield a contracted third Spider-Man film, while also announcing a solo Sinister Six spin-off film that would come before Amazing Spider-Man 3 and would feature six famous Spider-Man comic heroes whose origins would be hinted at during the majority of Amazing Spider-Man 2.

But, this year, Sony got struck with some good old Parker luck.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 had a worldwide gross of $709 million, which ended up being a failure only for the franchise’s grand plan of making the Amazing series its spin-off maker. In the annals of history, Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be remembered as a flop (even though it boosted Sony into a surprisingly profitable first quarter of 2014 along with 22 Jump Street) because three days after it opened to confused critics, Sony balked at the interconnected universe for Spider-Man and was sent into a tailspin. Creatives attached to future Spider-films (Cabin the Woods' Drew Goddard to Sinister Six and Star Trek Into Darkness’ Alex Kurtzman on Venom) were left hanging as Sony Pictures Entertainment struggled to figure out what the safest step forward would be. A year before the movie opened, SPE Chair Amy Pascal told Ain’t It Cool News that the studio would “never, ever ever” sell Spider-Man. All it took was a few weeks of Dubstep Electro in theaters and suddenly “never ever” was on the table.

Before Amazing Spider-Man 2 had opened, Captain America’s sequel, The Winter Soldier, set the record for an April opening at $95 million its first weekend. With Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy mostly finished by that time, discussions about the third Captain America movie began and the idea of including Spider-Man in an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ “Civil War” event suddenly seemed financially possible for Marvel who hadn’t missed with a movie since The Incredible Hulk failed to two-punch 2008. Sony was already in touch with Marvel negotiating which parts of the Spider-Man universe would be in play for their new schemes, so when Amazing Spider-Man 2 collapsed on itself so quickly, Marvel used the connection to float the idea of a Spider-Man sharing deal that would allow both companies to share the price of future Spider-Man movies while using the character in Captain America: Civil War.

Many versions of the deal were discussed, but the major sticking point was the placement of Sony’s Spider-Man team, especially producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolomach and where they planned to take the series. Debates over who would control the creative direction of the character, costuming, casting, even if Drew Goddard or the Russo brothers (directors of The Winter Soldier) would step in to control the shared mini-franchise. Ultimately, Sony didn’t want to cede control of a character that is still more profitable than any single Marvel hero and Marvel didn’t need to either--they re-arranged their Civil War movie to feature Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man and to introduce Chadwick Boseman as The Black Panther.

In 2013, Sony’s largest single investor was a hedge fund called Third Point. Its manager Daniel Loeb wrote a critical letter to SPE’s parent company about splitting the movie division off to free up the Sony Electronics stock. It caused quite an uproar over the summer last year, leading to Pascal having to deny the sale of Spider-Man. Loeb’s anger over 2013’s box office performance of White House Down and After Earthcompounded and lead to Third Point selling off its shares in October this year (pre-hack but still in the middle of more creative floundering from Sony Pictures Entertainment). Loeb’s exit included a statement that Sony had been profitable for Third Point, but the company was moving on. It’s unclear how much of this can be attributed to Sony’s refusal to handle the SPE film division the way Third Point wanted, but it seems in line with Loeb’s statements last year that he feels the electronics division has the potential for billion-dollar profits, not superheroes with shared intellectual property rights. Having Amazing Spider-Man 2 make money on paper was fine but rendering a franchise inert in the process was still a bad move.

Now, Pascal and other studio executives have more than Spider-Man to worry about with the fiasco surrounding hundreds of terabytes of stolen data and terrorist threats that targeted, prevented the release of, lead to public outcry over, and eventually promoted the digital resurgence of their North Korean-themed media spoof The Interview. Waiting to debut a digital release strategy to for the film until after the President of the United States said canceling its release was a mistake does not outwardly appear like the strategic move of a company that is on stable creative ground.

Its public perception that Sony Pictures Entertainment is not only making bad movies but is also holding back greater Sony investments, which is the problem that will eventually lead to Spider-Man returning home to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The character has never failed to bring in less than $700 million at the worldwide box office and the longer SPE holds onto Spider-Man with diminishing returns, the more pressure they will get to treat Spider-Man like an asset, not a property. The deal that was left on the table before Spider-Man was scuttled off Civil War was only contentious because Sony wanted to maintain creative control. Now, post-hack, if the choice is between sharing Spider-Man and avoiding stock-craziness or an outright sale, creative control might be beyond bargaining.